The figures, which are estimates for this year and next,come at a worrying time for the government which is on the ropes following the mass sexual frenzy in Cologne on New Year’s Eve and fighting to restore the trust of voters expected to punish it in vital regional polls in March.

Tensions remain high among many communities in Germany where migrants are housed and police have warned they fear rising levels of violence in the near future.

Angela Merkel has been heavily criticized over her ‘open border’ policy, which resulted in 1.1million refugees and migrants entering Germany last year.

When hundreds of thousands of migrants were arriving in the European Union last year on the shores of Italy and Greece, Germany made a bold decision: all refugees from the civil war in Syria would be welcome, regardless of where or how they entered the EU.

The Chancellor said Germany was a rich country that could afford to do its part to take in some of the world’s most vulnerable people fleeing war.

‘If Europe fails on the question of refugees … then it won’t be the Europe we wish for,’ said Merkel in August.

However, speaking at at an event in Mainz, near Frankfurt on January 11, Merkel admitted the European refugee crisis was ‘out of control’.

She said: ‘Now all of a sudden we are facing the challenge that refugees are coming to Europe and we are vulnerable, as we see, because we do not yet have the order, the control, that we would like to have.’